Game of the World Tree

Whilst seated within the temple of her divine kingdom, Evé quietly watched the newly promoted Silver-ranked players through her monitoring sand table.

These players had gathered in different temples across the Elven Forest, with their emotions swinging between excitement and despair.

“Don’t think you all can just sit back and relax after you’ve been promoted to Silver-rank. Greater power comes with greater responsibility and better equipment means a higher contribution cost. Henceforth, you all must work hard to attain the equipment that you desire!”

Overall, she had released a total of one hundred promotion slots, including one for a certain individual’s alternate account.

Among them, ninety-three players had reached the maximum level cap and just within an hour after the new update went live, these ninety-three players had all immediately advanced themselves to Silver-rank.

Of these players, two-thirds were melee combat specialist, while the remaining one-third were spellcasters.

This outcome is also roughly consistent with the proportion of the playerbase’s jobclass specification in the entire server.

Actually, Evé had based this second job class advancement similarly to how the local inhabitants of Seigües had structured their own strength promotion.

However, to help the players level up their strength more quickly, she had added an extra talent skill for each individual.

In particular, each jobclass have four path specializations, totaling twenty-four paths across the current six job classes.

Of course, with the priest jobclass not yet officially available, in practice, there were only twenty specializations the players can choose from.

And interestingly enough, while at least one player had chosen each specialization paths, most players showed a preference for certain paths, with combat-offensive specializations being particularly popular.

For example, the Elemental Path for Mages, the Burst Path for Archers, the Weapon specialization for Warriors, and the Assassin specialization for Hunters were all hugely popular.

Meanwhile, Druids were an exception, with the majority of them opting for the Healing specialization.

But in hindsight, it’s really not surprising since, after all, it’s currently the only jobclass with the potential to use healing abilities.

As for certain noteworthy players Evé had frequently kept an eye on, their chosen paths were pretty much in line with her expectations.

For instance, Little Salty Cat, who has a propensity for using wide-area spells and long-range combat, unsurprisingly this little rich lady chose the Elemental specialization.

Under the goddess’s favor, she ‘luckily’ acquired the innate spell [Explosive Flames].

This is an elemental spell from the fourth circle that has the widest attack range and highest output damage but also the greatest mana consumption.

As the wealthiest player in the game, this little rich lady fully equipped herself with the top-class ‘graduation’ gear for the Silver-rank on the first day it was made available.

Yet, despite this, she was still murmuring about when the legendary golden equipment for the Silver-rank would be released.

Evé shook her head with slight amusement.

I’m afraid her behavior would likely infuriate the other newly promoted Silver-ranked players.

Well, having wealth certainly has its privileges.

Turning her attention to HootyBird, who was also a mage like her friend, Evé noticed that she had chosen the Magic Array specialization path instead.

It seemed she had learned a lot about magical arrays from Alice and became very interested in them.

Amongst all players, this intellectual lady was probably the only one capable enough of independently drawing teleportation arrays by herself.

In addition, during the recent celebratory party they held, Evé heard from Little Salty Cat that HootyBird had apparently been tinkering with steam guns alongside a few other life-oriented players, wherein they kept trying to imbue these items with skills.

It was even rumored that they were very close to making a breakthrough with their experiments and now only needed a more stable and intricate magical array to successfully implement their ideas.

Well, now that HootyBird had advanced to the Silver rank, resolving the issues that had been holding them back might just be a matter of time.

Evé was quite interested to see how their experiments would unfold.

Personally, she didn’t believe that players would be able to develop something as advanced like airplanes, artillery or anything of such sort here in Seigües, as that would entail having expertise in such items, and most players were just ordinary people from Earth.

Nonetheless, she was confident that they would be able to come up with relatively simple inventions instead.

Boxlunch chose the Assassin specialization, which further enhanced his stealth capabilities and granted him the ability to deliver more deadlier, precision attacks.

In one-on-one combat, Evé believed this guy might be the strongest one amongst the entire server.

Even for Evé, she wasn’t confident she could win a fight on equal terms with Boxlunch if she were to completely seal off her divine powers during their battle.

This player is truly a top-tier powerhouse.

Of course, the reason Boxlunch is so formidable in combat is mainly because he spends an extraordinary amount of time online and has accumulated extensive battle experience.

Out of the 60,000 players on the whole server, no one is more dedicated to fighting than this reclusive guy.

Tomato Stir-fry chose the Weapon specialization, ranking him just below Boxlunch and Little Salty Cat in terms of overall combat power on the entire server.

However, Demacia, whose also has the warrior jobclass, chose the guardian specialization.

Well…the term ‘Guardian’ is just a polite and fancy way of saying that they can take heavy beatings like tanks.

Yet despite this, Evé thought that if Demacia continued progressing this manner, then this punk might truly be able to firmly secure himself the throne as the number one tank in the entire server.

At that point, no one would be able to take him down…

And coupled with his knack for taunting everyone he encounters…

He might just become the most annoying player, one that no one else wants to challenge in a PK battle.

As for Li Mu, the de facto commander-in-chief of the players, he is still very straightforward and methodical in choosing his advanced job class.

He went for a Control specialization, aiming to fully embrace the support role of a Druid.

Even his innate skill is a fourth-circle crowd control spell called, [Bloodvine Tentacles].

But then again, for a commander like him, having healing and support job classes is the most suitable, as these roles are relatively safe in team battles.

Then there’s Transformer Ji Gang, the only player from the third beta to reach level 40.

He chose the Burst specialization.

He is one of the few Archers out there.

Moreover, even among the pool of Archer players, he stands out in terms of skills.

It’s said that this is because Ji Gang learned archery from his uncle during middle school and joined an archery club.

Unexpectedly, these real life skills of his came in handy here within the game.

Aside from these few players, Evé doesn’t pay much attention to the others.

—Well.

That female blacksmith named Meng Zhihan, who was the only player who chose the feral path, also somewhat caught her attention, just like her close friend Yuanjuan, who also barely made the cut.

She mostly paid attention to the latter since it was the person who almost led the “Codex of Life” astray, or at least she was the main culprit based on what she heard from her conversations with Little Salty Cat.

However, even though Yuanjuan managed to get the advanced jobclass slot due to her good luck, her level is still far from what is required, so it will probably be quite some time before she can actually be promoted.

As for this particular player who seemed to have some tendencies of a female bootlicker and had good social abilities, Evé had other plans in mind.

Of course, those are matters for the future.

Right now, she has another plan that she wanted to try out.

Whilst gently standing up from her divine throne, Eve’s body shimmered with radiant light as she left her divine kingdom in her incarnation form.

When she reappeared, she found herself deep underground once more.

However this area was not the Deepfissure cavern nor the western region of the Underdark.

But rather, she had arrived at the deeper underground layer nestled within the roots of the World Tree.

Here, a mysterious labyrinth had suddenly appeared at some point.

The entire maze is made of massive stones and dark bricks, adorned with demonic reliefs, which gave off an eerie and terrifying vibe.

This was actually Eve’s own personal creation.

She designed it in her divine kingdom based on labyrinth models from Earth and then used a portion of her divine power to project it into reality, making it tangible.

From the outside, it might look like a foreboding labyrinth, but it is actually the sealing ground of the seventh demon lord, Azazel.

Of course, this labyrinth is also the new dungeon she created for the players.

And just like the Shadow Dungeon she made beforehand, this one can also be endlessly replayed.

— 405 —

【 THE PLAYERSNEW TOYS 】

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